NGT requests an updated report on the Bandhwari landfill’s handling of legacy garbage
The Municipal Corporations of Gurugram and Faridabad have been requested by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) to provide a new status report on the handling of legacy debris at the Bandhwari dump site by April 4. This occurs at the same time as the tribunal realizes how slowly legacy garbage is being handled.
Recent hearings on two petitions brought by local resident Poonam Yadav and environmentalist Vivek Kamboj were held by the bench consisting of chairman Prakash Shrivastava, judicial member Sudhir Agarwal, and expert member Dr. A Senthil Vel. The petitioners claimed that the NGT’s September 2022 ruling, which ordered the municipal corporations to cease disposing of daily trash at the landfill, was being broken by the daily waste being disposed of at Bandhwari.
The Bench said, “We notice that neither the municipal corporation’s nor Bandhwari’s remediation of legacy trash’s progress on waste processing has been mentioned in their reports. The next hearing may be used to complete this. The subject is scheduled to be heard again on April 4.
In the meantime, a senior official of the Gurugram Municipal Corporation said that, in addition to the 2,000 tons of new rubbish that is being deposited at the Bandhwari landfill site every day, six businesses have been hired to treat the legacy waste.
In Bandhwari, at least 38 trommels were in use for the processing of legacy garbage. A few months ago, the Gurugram Municipal Corporation (MC) presented an action plan to the National Green Tribunal outlining how it will handle 23.5 lakh MT of legacy trash between December 2023 and June 2024.
One lakh MT of legacy garbage was scheduled to be processed in December of last year, followed by 3.6 lakh MT in January of this year, 4 lakh MT in February, 4.6 lakh MT in March, 4 lakh MT in April, 3.3 lakh MT in May, and 3 lakh MT in June, according to the timetable that the Gurugram MC had provided to the NGT.
According to this schedule, 23.5 lakh MT of legacy garbage were to be treated in total; by the end of March of the current year, 16.5 lakh MT had been completed.
Dr. Balpreet Singh, the Additional Commissioner of Gurugram Municipal Corporation, who is directly overseeing the legacy garbage processing, has lately issued directives to expedite the completion of this job in accordance with the schedule that the municipal body has planned.
According to MC authorities, the disposal of trash results in the production of compost, refuse-derived fuel (RDF), and inert garbage, all of which are disposed of by private organizations on an individual basis. Farmers utilize compost in their crops, and RDF is supplied to cement producers. In a similar manner, landfills use inert trash.
